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Dear Carolyn: My husband and I are good friends with a couple whose dietary needs have slowly
changed during the eight years we have known them.

When we met, we would often hang out and have some beer or wine and food — which often included
a shared love of bread, cheese, meats, ice cream, etc.

After a couple of years, the wife began to struggle with intestinal issues and finally, after a
year or so of discomfort, decided to adopt a gluten-free diet. Within six months, she also
eliminated dairy. Now, the couple has started the Paleo diet.

I can tell she is feeling better physically, and I am happy for her.

We don’t hang out with them as a couple anymore, however.

It seems as if the husbands can get together to grab a beer (which he still drinks) or she and I
might get together at a coffee shop, where she can have tea. But the days of getting together for a
meal seem to be over.

I also can’t seem to get together with her without the discussion turning to how awesome the
diet is or how dangerous gluten is, with the implication that my husband and I should start
following it as well.

I am tired of being preached the “gospel” of dietary restrictions. I find myself avoiding her
and also wanting to shake her and say: “We’re all going to die! And I want to die with a piece of
baguette slathered in triple-creme Brie in my hand!”

This doesn’t seem a sound approach. Suggestions for a better one?

— I Want My Cake and My Friendship,Too

Dear Cake: I think that is the perfect approach.

You are friends, you see how much better she feels on her new diet, and you are happy for her.
But you simply don’t want to make the same lifestyle change she did.

So why not just say that, in the you-know-I-love-you way that only true friends can pull
off?

Maybe your friendship has never had that tone. But even then, as I sift through questions
submitted to this column, I spend a shocking (to me) amount of time reading different versions of
almost the same story: of people who are so dismayed by changes in a friendship that they’re
avoiding the friend.

Inevitably, they say they’re close to pulling the plug on the friendship — right after they
mention that telling the friend the unvarnished truth is, of course, not an option.

So, for you and all of you, I advise this: Because you’re already ending the friendship,
passively or otherwise, what do you have to lose by stating how you feel, what you loved, why you
have drifted? Make it a deal, even: “I so miss our dinners together, all four of us. What if I
serve nothing but Paleo and, in return, we talk about anything but Paleo?”

Truths seem mean, I get it, but you have surely been on the receiving end of a once-good friend’s
dwindling attention — and doesn’t that feel pretty mean, too? And gutless?

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’d rather have an exasperated friend say, “For the love of
crusty baguettes, would you please stop dissecting my diet?” than just demote me to thrice-a-year
tea.